Lethal (26 page)

“Aw now, that really hurts my feelings.”

“I know Mrs. Gillette’s late husband was a police officer. I know that the recently deceased Fred Hawkins was his best friend. Now, call me crazy, but the coincidence of that has got my gut instinct churning, and even on an off day, it’s usually pretty damn reliable.”

Coburn dropped the sarcasm. “You’re not crazy.”

“Okay. What’s she got?”

“I don’t know.”

“Does she know who The Bookkeeper is?”

“She says no.”

“Do you believe her?”

Coburn stared hard at her. “Yeah.”

“Then what’s she sitting on?”

“I don’t know.”

“Stop jerking me around, Coburn.”

“I’m not.”

Hamilton swore under his breath. “Fine, don’t tell me. When you’re back in Washington, we’ll discuss your insubordination in addition to the long list of offenses that you—”

“You’re using scare tactics now? Go ahead, kick me out of your stinking bureau. See if I give a fuck.”

Hamilton added even more heat to his voice. “I’ll supply VanAllen with whatever it takes to find you and bring you in, by force if necessary, for the safety of the woman and child.”

Coburn’s jaw turned to iron. “Hamilton, you do that, and they’ll likely die. Soon.”

“Look, I know VanAllen. I appointed him myself. I grant you, he’s no dynamo, but—”

“Then what is he?”

“A bureaucrat.”

“That’s a given. What’s he like?”

“Mild-mannered. Beleaguered, even. His personal life is shit. He’s got a special needs son, a tragic case who ought to be in a perpetual care home but isn’t.”

“How come?”

“Tom doesn’t discuss it. If I were guessing, I’d say the expense makes it out of the question.”

Again Coburn pulled that thoughtful frown that Honor was beginning to recognize. “Give me forty-eight hours. During that time, you check out VanAllen. If you can convince me that he’s honest, I’ll come in. With luck, I’ll have got the goods on The Bookkeeper by then.”

“In the meantime, what are you going to do with Mrs. Gillette and the child?”

“I don’t know.”

“Let me talk to her again.”

Coburn handed the phone to her.

“I’m here, Mr. Hamilton.”

“Mrs. Gillette. Have you been following our conversation?”

“Yes.”

“I apologize for some of the language.”

“Doesn’t matter.”

“What’s your take?”

“On what?”

“On everything that’s been discussed.”

“Is Lee Coburn his real name?”

He seemed taken aback by the question. It was several seconds before he replied in the affirmative, but she wasn’t entirely convinced of his truthfulness.

“Why did the woman in your office say that he was dead?”

“She was under my orders to. For Coburn’s protection.”

“Explain that, please.”

“He’s been in a very precarious situation down there. I couldn’t risk someone coming to suspect him of being an agent and calling an FBI office and weaseling out verification of it. So I put it through the bureau pipeline that he’d been killed while on assignment. It’s even in his service records in case a hacker gets into our system.”

“You’re the only person who knows he’s alive?”

“Me and my assistant who answered the phone.”

“And now me.”

“That’s right.”

“So if something happened to Coburn, any information that he’d passed along to me regarding Sam Marset and The Bookkeeper, or anything that I’d picked up inadvertently, would be extremely valuable to the FBI and the Justice Department.”

He answered with reluctance. “Yes. And Coburn is
willing to place your life in jeopardy in order to safeguard that information. Tell me the truth. What have you got? What’s Coburn after?”

“Even I don’t know, Mr. Hamilton.”

She figured that he was questioning her veracity during the long silence that followed.

Then he asked, “Are you saying any of this under duress?”

“No.”

“Then help me get other agents to you. They’ll come in and pick up you and your daughter. You don’t have to fear any reprisal from Coburn. He won’t hurt you. I’d stake my career on that. But you need to be brought in so I can protect you. Tell me where you are.”

She held Coburn’s gaze for several long moments while her common sense waged war with something deeper, something elemental that she couldn’t even put a name to. It tugged at her to abandon her innate caution, to stop playing it safe, to forsake what she
knew
and to go with what she
felt
. The feeling was powerful enough to make her fear it. She feared it even more than she feared the man looking back at her with fierce blue eyes.

She went with it anyway.

“Didn’t you hear what Coburn told you, Mr. Hamilton? If you send other agents in after us now, you’ll never get The Bookkeeper.” Before Hamilton could respond, she returned the phone to Coburn.

He took it from her and said, “Too bad, Hamilton. No sale.”

“Have you brainwashed her?”

“Forty-eight hours.”

“Waterboarded?”

“Forty-eight hours.”

“Jesus Christ. At least give me a phone number.”

“Forty-eight hours.”

“All right, goddammit! I’ll give you thirty-six.
Thirty-six
, and that’s—”

Coburn disconnected and dropped the phone onto the bunk, then asked Honor, “Do you think this tub will float?”

W
hen Tom got home, Janice was deep into a word game on her cell phone. She didn’t even know he was there until he moved up behind her and spoke her name, then she nearly jumped out of her skin. “Tom! Don’t do that!”

“Sorry I startled you. I thought you would have heard me come in.”

He tried but failed to keep his bitterness from showing. She was playing word games with someone she’d never met who lived on the other side of the world. His world was crumbling. It seemed to him an unfair imbalance. After all, everything he did, he did to try and win her approval, to elevate her regard of him, to make their godawful life a little better.

Of course it wasn’t her fault that he was having a bad day. She didn’t deserve being the scapegoat for it. But he felt defeated and resentful, so rather than saying something that would set off a quarrel, he left his briefcase there
in the den where he’d found her and went into Lanny’s room.

The boy’s eyes were closed. Tom wondered if they simply hadn’t reopened after blinking, or if Lanny was actually sleeping. Did he dream? If so, what did he dream about? It was masochistic to ask himself these questions. He would never have answers to them.

He continued to stare down at the motionless boy and recollected something that had happened shortly after Lanny’s birth, when he and Janice were still trying to come to terms with the extent of his limitations and how they would impact their future. A Catholic priest had called on them. He came to comfort and console, but his platitudes about God’s will had upset and angered them. Within five minutes of his arrival, Tom had showed him to the door.

But the cleric had said one thing that had stuck with Tom. He’d said that some believed impaired individuals like Lanny had a direct line to God’s mind and heart, that although they couldn’t communicate with us here on earth, they communed constantly with the Almighty and his angels. Surely it was another banality that the priest had taken from a how-to-minister-to-the-flock manual. But sometimes Tom wanted desperately to believe it.

Now he bent down and kissed Lanny’s forehead. “Put in a good word for me.”

When he entered the kitchen, Janice, who had prepared a meal for him, served the plate at the single place setting on the table, saying apologetically, “I didn’t know when you’d be home, or if you would be, so I didn’t cook.”

“This is fine.” He sat down at the table and spread the napkin over his lap. Although the shrimp salad, buttered French bread, and sliced melon had been artfully arranged on the plate, he had no appetite.

“Would you like a glass of wine?”

He shook his head. “I’ve got to go back to the office for a while. I should be there if something breaks.”

Janice sat down in the chair across from him. “You look done in.”

“I feel done in.”

“Nothing new on the kidnapping?”

“Nothing, and everyone including the dogcatcher is out looking for them. Or their bodies.”

Janice crossed her arms over her middle and hugged herself. “Don’t even say it.”

He placed his elbow on the table and leaned his head into his hand, rubbing his eye sockets with his fingers. Janice reached across the table and covered the hand resting beside his water glass.

“I don’t think he’ll kill them, Tom.”

“Then why did he take them?”

“Ransom?”

“No call. We’re monitoring the father-in-law’s home phone. He’s had a lot of concern calls from acquaintances, but nothing else. Same on his cell phone.” He picked up his fork and thoughtfully tapped it against the rim of his plate, but he didn’t take a bite of food. “I don’t think this is about ransom.”

“Why do you say that?”

“Coburn doesn’t fit the profile of a guy who shoots up his place of employment, or an office, or a school.”

“How so?”

Realizing he wouldn’t be eating, he set down his fork and tried to organize the thoughts that had been bouncing around inside his head. “Typically those guys are making a final and defiant stand against the dirty, rotten world and everybody in it who’s wronged them. By golly, they’re going
to make a statement that will have a memorable impact, then go out in a blaze of glory.

“When they don’t commit suicide at the scene, they usually go home, kill their wife and kids, their parents, their in-laws, whoever,
then
kill themselves.” He lowered his hands and looked at Janice. “They may hold some hostages for a while before either killing them or releasing them. But they typically don’t disappear with them.”

“I understand what you’re saying, but…” She gave a small shake of her head. “I’m sorry, Tom. I don’t know how to respond because I don’t know what you’re getting at.”

“What I’m getting at is that Lee Coburn isn’t your textbook mass murderer.”

“Is there such a thing?”

“Of course there are exceptions, but he doesn’t fit the accepted profile.” He hesitated, then added, “Even Hamilton picked up on it.”

“Clint Hamilton? I thought he was in Washington now.”

“He is. But he called me today, wanted to know what the hell is going on down here and what I’m doing about it.”

Janice made a small sound of dismay. “He was checking up on you?”

“Essentially.”

“He’s got his nerve.” She pushed back her chair and indicated his untouched plate. “Are you going to eat that?”

“Sorry, no. It looks good, but…” He ended on a helpless shrug.

She carried his plate to the counter, cursing his predecessor under her breath. “If he didn’t think you were up to handling the job, why did he appoint you to the position?”

What Tom believed to be the answer to that was too humiliating to speak aloud, especially to Janice. She abhorred defeatism. She particularly abhorred it in her husband.

He said, “I don’t know where Hamilton got his information, probably from other agents in the office, but he must have noticed the same discrepancies in Coburn’s M.O. that I did. He even asked me if Coburn was an agent from my office working undercover at the trucking company.”

She sputtered a laugh, then sobered so quickly it was comical. “Was he?”

Tom gave her a crooked smile. “No. At least I didn’t place him there.” His smile slipped. “Someone in New Orleans who outranked me could have, I suppose. Or someone from another agency.”

“Without informing you?”

He merely shrugged, again not wanting to admit that he was inconsequential. Or at least was regarded so by coworkers.